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Lost in Japan: Rondo of Blood

Lost in Japan: Rondo of Blood
While Western gamers enjoyed Super Castlevania IV and Bloodlines, little did they know
that the truly coolest 16-bit Castlevania of all was hiding away on the shelves of Japan.

By Matt Leslie

I

f you polled people on what
Castlevania
game
they
associate with the Super
Nintendo the vast majority, if not
all of them, would respond with
Super Castlevania IV. There’s
little mystery to this: Super
Castlevania IV was among the
first batch of good games for the
console, is jacked up to the brim
with Mode 7 and it even has
“super” in the title. Quite frankly,
there’s not a lot of love for the
other Super Nintendo entry to
the series, Castlevania: Dracula
X, but this is sort of a shame.
Dracula X still boasts amazing
graphics, sound and atmosphere
and retains that traditional
Castlevania feel and movement
from the original trilogy. Even if it
does kind of let itself down with
patches of irritating level design
and poor enemy placement, it’s
still a fantastic addition to the
Super Nintendo library.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 Edition

The
real
reason
Castlevania: Dracula X on
the Super Nintendo gets a
mixed reaction is because it’s
considered to be a somewhat
butchered port of a game on
the TurboGrafx-16 released only
in Japan. The Japanese title for
this game is Akumajou Dracula
X: Chi no Rondo, which literally
translates to “Devil’s Castle
Dracula X: Rondo of Blood”, and
this article could probably stop
right here because a title that
awesome basically speaks for
itself.
You can tell Konami meant
business just by the fact there’s
an X in the title; in the 90s an
X in a videogame title was
basically unofficial shorthand for
“RADICAL”. However, since the
Super Nintendo version was also
radical enough to have an X in the
title this article will refer to the

TurboGrafx-16 version as Rondo
of Blood to avoid confusion.
Rondo of Blood is the true 16bit successor to the original
Castlevania trilogy on the NES as
it takes all the assets from those
games, polishes them a little and
cranks the dial up to eleven.
You see, Super Castlevania IV
simply spent too much time
faffing around. Every other level
seemingly focuses on utilising
Mode 7 as much as the Super
Nintendo could handle without
its innards melting, and the
game has one of the most
pointless features ever, allowing
you to hold a button and flail
the whip around aimlessly.
Super Castlevania IV loosened
up character movement and
allowed you to attack in eight
directions, sacrificing the tension
of a true Castlevania game
to become a more audiencefriendly action game. It’s a good
18 • GameOn Magazine